Six degrees holds true online

Researchers have found that the idea no one person is farther away from another by more than six acquaintances, is equally true using email. The team of researchers at Columbia University discovered that getting an email message to any one of 18 selected target recipients from more than 60,000 participants took on average between five and seven intermediate steps. Team leader Duncan Watts reported that despite the high number of participants there were a large proportion that were well educated and based in the US. ...more

E3 2003: Xbox press conference report

Doom III on Xbox! Rare shows first Xbox game! Halo 2 blasts in with ultimate gameplay spectacular! Microsoft whips out the big guns to impress. Microsoft never does things by half. While some companies are happy to woo games journalists with a civilised press breakfast and a fine selection of pastries, the Xbox press conference was held LA's Grand Olympic Auditorium with blinding spotlights, pumping techno music and cute girls in skimpy T-shirts handing out pretzels. ...more

Transmeta goes Gigahertz

Transmeta, manufacturer of the low-power, low-heat Crusoe chips has announced the Crusoe TM6000 processor, which is a third as large as previous versions. The smaller volume means the TM6000 will be well placed for its target mobile devices. Mark Allen, president and chief executive officer, Transmeta Corporation, said: "The new Crusoe microprocessor is targeted at lightweight, full-feature notebooks; small and thin form factor devices, such as Tablet PCs; ultra dense servers; and a range of embedded systems that are migrating to x86, such as networking equipment, printers and set-top boxes. ...more

Toshiba unveils portable rights management

Toshiba is the latest company to attempt to develop a rights management system designed to guarantee users free access to digital content whilst preventing unauthorised copying and distribution. Most DRM (digital rights management) systems rely on encrypting content or restricting access to it by only allowing it to be played by certain software or on specified hardware. Toshiba's system used an encrypted key that is stored on a Secure Digital card. ...more

Microsoft claims Vista take-up doubles XP

Microsoft said on Monday that it has sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licenses in the first month since the operating system's debut of the consumer version on 30 January. The world's biggest software maker said the pace of Vista adoption is at more than twice the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP, which had sold 17 million licenses after its first two months of release. 'It's a little bit better than what we were expecting,' said Bill Mannion, a director in the Windows marketing group. ...more